“Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters” examines the demimonde of Chang’an in the Pingkang Ward as the intersection between sexual commerce and examination culture. Through contextualized close reading ...
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“Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters” examines the demimonde of Chang’an in the Pingkang Ward as the intersection between sexual commerce and examination culture. Through contextualized close reading of key vignettes from the late-Tang collection Anecdotes from the Northern Ward (Beili zhi), this chapter argues that they illustrate the scintillating points of contact between the demimonde and a world of urban alleys and non-literati networks. The anecdotes make visible the channels and flows of information, desire, and resources in an urban space. Here in its undulating lanes, the literati visitor must acquire the urban savvy to recognize the workings of such a world operating behind the discourse of romance.Less

Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters

Linda Rui Feng

Published in print: 2015-07-31

“Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters” examines the demimonde of Chang’an in the Pingkang Ward as the intersection between sexual commerce and examination culture. Through contextualized close reading of key vignettes from the late-Tang collection Anecdotes from the Northern Ward (Beili zhi), this chapter argues that they illustrate the scintillating points of contact between the demimonde and a world of urban alleys and non-literati networks. The anecdotes make visible the channels and flows of information, desire, and resources in an urban space. Here in its undulating lanes, the literati visitor must acquire the urban savvy to recognize the workings of such a world operating behind the discourse of romance.

The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized ...
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The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.Less

Introduction

Linda Rui Feng

Published in print: 2015-07-31

The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.

During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through ...
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During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.Less

City of Marvel and Transformation : Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

Linda Rui Feng

Published in print: 2015-07-31

During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.